Emmanual Levinas (1906-1995) is acknowledged as one of the great Jewish thinkers of the 20th century, yet during his lifetime he refused the label "Jewish philosopher", insisting that he was a philosopher "tout court". This book explores the relationship between Levinas' ethical philosophy and his understanding of Judaism. The first chapter focuses on the "face-to-face" or "ethical relation" as it is presented in "Totality and Infinity". Subsequent chapters are concerned with showing how this quasi-phenomenological account of the ethical relation provides the orientation of his major texts, the significance of key terms in Levinas' discourse - particularly "humanism", "God" and "Judaism" - is clarified. Finally, the author examines the writings that constitute Levinas' most distinctive contribution to Jewish thought - his talmudic commentaries.

This comprehensive book provides a lucid introduction to Rabbinic Judaism, defined as the Judaism built on the story of God's revelation to Moses of the Torah at Sinai.
Jacob Neusner outlines and examines the four stages in which the initial period of the historical development of Rabbinic Judaism divides, beginning with the Pentateuch and ending with its definitive and normative statement in the Talmud of Babylonia. He traces the development of Rabbinic Judaism by exploring the relationships between and among the cognate writings which embody its formative history.

In this volume, contributors consider the ways that Jewish communities and users of new media negotiate their uses of digital technologies in light of issues related to religious identity, community and authority. Digital Judaism presents a broad analysis of how and why various Jewish groups negotiate with digital culture in particular ways, situating such observations within a wider discourse of how Jewish groups throughout history have utilized communication technologies to maintain their Jewish identities across time and space. Chapters address issues related to the negotiation of authority between online users and offline religious leaders and institutions not only within ultra-Orthodox communities, but also within the broader Jewish religious culture, taking into account how Jewish engagement with media in Israel and the diaspora raises a number of important issues related to Jewish community and identity. Featuring recent scholarship by leading and emerging scholars of Judaism and media, Digital Judaism is an invaluable resource for researchers in new media, religion and digital culture.

Joseph Weiss (1918-69) showed a single-minded commitment to identifying and describing the mystical element in hasidism and to unravelling the spiritual and historical meaning of the hasidic movement. The studies collected here are still quoted in every serious study of hasidism. Joseph Dan's Introduction, written specially for this paperback edition, examines Weiss's scholarship both in the context of subsequent scholarly research and in the light of the resurgence of hasidism since the Second World War. He concludes that many of Weiss's detailed, perceptive, and empathetic studies are as relevant to understanding developments in the contemporary hasidic world as they are for understanding the emergence and growth of hasidism in the eighteenth century.

Bruce Chilton and Jacob Neusner study the points of comparisons and contrast between formative Christianity and Judaism. By identifying three categories of authority in each of the two religious worlds, they show how they have both worked in compelling or failing to get someone to do a given action.
The arguments are introduced by a general discussion of the founding figures of the two religions, Moses and Jesus, and how their inherent authority distilled itself through the structure of their religious institutions and intellectual thoughts.

Transforming Literature into Scripture examines how the early textual traditions of ancient Israel - stories, laws, and rituals - were transformed into sacred writings. By comparing evidence from two key collections from antiquity - the royal library at Nineveh and the biblical manuscripts from the Dead Sea Scrolls - the book traces the stabilisation of textual traditions in the ancient Near East towards fixed literary prototypes. The study presents a new methodology which enables the quantification, categorisation and statistical analysis of texts from different languages, writing systems, and media. The methodology is tested on wide range of text genres from the cuneiform and biblical traditions in order to determine which texts tend towards stabilised forms. Transforming Literature into Scripture reveals how authoritative literary collections metamorphosed into fixed ritualised texts and will be of interest to scholars across Biblical, Judaic and Literary Studies.

This superb collection of writings comes as a tribute to one of the leading scholars of Judaic Studies in our century, Alexander Altmann, and to the Institute of Jewish Studies, which he founded. His former students and colleagues present essays which touch upon the many areas of Professor Altmann's interests. The studies range from early rabbinic mystical texts to contemporary theological investigations. The majority of the articles explore leading figures and issues in medieval and early modern Jewish philosophy and mysticism.
Among the important persons whose writings are examined are Maimonides, Gersonides, Abraham Abulafia, Mendelssohn, Leo Strauss, and Altmann himself. The contributors to this volume are at the forefront of contemporary scholarship in the field.

"Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls" explores the evidence about the different uses of time-measurement in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Hebrew Bible and other ancient Jewish texts. James C. VanderKam examines the pertinent texts, their sources and the different uses to which people put calendrical information in the Christian world. He argues that the scrolls indicate that a dispute about the correct calendar for dating festivals was one of the principal reasons for the separation of the authors of the scrolls from Jewish society.

"The Sage in Jewish Society of Late Antiquity" explores the social position of rabbis in Palestinian (Roman) and Babylonian (Persian) society from the period of the fall of the Temple to late antiquity. Author Richard Kalmin argues that ancient rabbinic sources depict comparable differences between Palestinian and Babylonian rabbinic relationships with non-Rabbis." The Sage in Jewish Society of Late Antiquity" provides a cultured and stimulating analysis of the role of the sage in late antiquity and sheds new light on rabbinic comments on such diverse topics as biblical heroes and genealogy and lineage.

For almost two thousand years, various images of Jesus accompanied Jewish thought and imagination: a flesh-and-blood Jew, a demon, a spoiled student, an idol, a brother, a (failed) Messiah, a nationalist rebel, a Greek god in Jewish garb, and more. This volume charts for the first time the different ways that Jesus has been represented and understood in Jewish culture and thought. Chapters from many of the leading scholars in the field cover the topic from a variety of disciplinary perspectives - Talmud, Midrash, Rabbinics, Kabbalah, Jewish Magic, Messianism, Hagiography, Modern Jewish Literature, Thought, Philosophy, and Art - to address the ways in which representations of Jesus contribute to and change Jewish self-understanding throughout the last two millennia. Beginning with the question of how we know that Jesus was a Jew, the book then moves through meticulous analyses of Jewish and Christian scripture and literature to provide a rounded and comprehensive analysis of Jesus in Jewish Culture. This multidisciplinary study will be of great interest not only to students of Jewish history and philosophy, but also to scholars of religious studies, Christianity, intellectual history, literature and cultural studies.

Find hope and renewal in life's natural cycle of ordinary losses and new beginnings.

"When we intentionally enter into our everyday walk through small losses, the terrain of larger losses, the valley of the shadow of death, is not totally unknown. It is not completely unfamiliar, alien, terrifying, for we have walked some of this way before with our lesser losses. We can journey through this valley of loss, for journey through it we must. And we can emerge markedly changed, but alive, on the other side." from the Prologue

Going beyond loss as a problem to be resolved, a grief to be worked through, Dr. Nancy Copeland-Payton, a spiritual director and ordained clergywoman, reframes loss from the perspective that our everyday losses help us learn what we need to handle the major losses. Weaving in spiritual and classical themes, personal and scriptural story, Dr. Copeland-Payton shows us that by becoming aware of what our lesser losses have to teach us, the larger losses of our lives become less terrifying. Each chapter includes a spiritual practice and questions for reflection to help you: Mine the hidden depths of painful losses of things and placesTraverse the devastating loss of relationships and the heart-wrenching death of people we love.Overcome the steep, dark slopes of loss of beliefs and faith.Venture past our fear of the losses of aging and our own death."

From its very beginnings in the eighteenth century, the Hasidic movement was suffused with a joyous enthusiasm and optimism derived from the notion of God being in all things. This led to an insistence on joy as an essential element in divine worship, and in consequence a distinctive attitude to prayer. This classic work, presented here with a new introduction, is a study of the attitudes of the hasidic rebbes to prayer. Louis Jacobs bases himself principally on the works compiled by rebbes themselves and records preserved by their disciples. Copious quotations from these writings form a sound basis for his masterly analysis-unsurpassed since it was first published in 1972-and enable the reader to gain a familiarity with Hasidic thought on the subject of divine worship at first hand.

1997 was the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls explores the evidence about calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Hebrew Bible and other ancient Jewish texts. James C. VanderKam examines the pertinent texts, their sources and the different uses to which people put calendrical information in the Christian world.
Calendars in the Dead Sea Scrolls provides a valuable addition to the Dead Sea Scrolls Series and contributes to the elucidation of the scroll texts themselves and their relation to other Biblical texts.

Modern critical scholars divide the Pentateuch into distinct components, identifying areas of unevenness in the scriptural tradition, which point to several interwoven documents rather than one immaculate whole. While the conclusions reached by such critical scholarship are still matters of dispute, the inconsistencies which it has identified stand clearly before us and pose a serious challenge to the believer in divine revelation. How can a text marred by contradiction be the legacy of Sinai? How can there be reverence for holy scriptures that show signs of human intervention? David Weiss Halivni explores these questions, not by disputing the evidence itself or by defending the absolute integrity of the Pentateuchal words at all costs, but rather by accepting the inconsistencies of the text as such and asking how this text might yet be a divine legacy.Inconsistencies and unevenness in the Pentateuchal scriptures are not the discovery of modern textual science alone. Halivni demonstrates that the earliest stewards of the Torah, including some of those represented in the Bible itself, were aware of discrepancies within the tradition. From the Book of Chronicles through the commentaries of the Rabbis, sensitive readers have perceived maculations, which mitigate against the notion of an unblemished, divine document, and have responded to these maculations in different ways.Revelation Restored asserts that acknowledging and accounting for human intervention in the Pentateuchal text is not alien to the Biblical or Rabbinic tradition and need not belie the tradition of revelation. Moreover, it argues that through recognizing textual problems in the scriptures, as well as efforts to resolve them in tradition, we may learn not only about the nature of the Pentateuch itself but also about the ongoing relationship between its people and its source.

Humor has had a profound effect on the way the Jewish people see the world, and has sustained them through millennia of hardships and suffering. God Laughed reviews, organizes, and categorizes the humor of the ancient Jewish texts the Hebrew Bible, the Talmud, and Midrash in a clear, readable, and accessible manner. These works have influenced the Jewish people in many ways, and all are replete with humor and wit. Inevitably, this oeuvre of Jewish humor has itself influenced generations of comics, as well as genres of humor. The authors use examples of Biblical humor from several broad categories, including irony, sarcasm, wordplay, humorous names, humorous imagery, and humorous situations. Because their primary purpose is not to entertain, but to teach humanity how to live the ideal life, much of the humor in the Talmud and the Midrash has a single purpose: to demonstrate that evil is wrong and even, at times, ludicrous. This may help explain why approximately 1,500 years after its closing, the Talmud is still such a fascinating work. God Laughed is the latest addition to Transaction's Jewish Studies series.

Via a participant-observer approach, Synagogue Life analyzes the three essential dimensions of synagogue life: the houses of prayer, study, and assembly. In each Heilman documents the rich detail of the synagogue experience while articulating the social and cultural drama inherent in them. He illustrates how people come to the synagogue not only for spiritual purposes but also to find out where and how they fit into life in the neighborhood in which they share.

In his new introduction, Heilman discusses what led him to write this book and the process of personal transformation through which he, as an Orthodox Jew, had to go in order to turn a disciplined eye on the world from which he came. Rather than using the stranger-as-native approach of classic anthropology, he had instead to begin as a native who discoverd how to look at a once-taken-for-granted synagogue life like a stranger. In the afterword, arguing for the efficacy of this approach, Heilman offers guidance on how natives can use their special familiarity and still be trained to distance themselves from their own group, making use of the disciplines of sociology and anthropology. Synagogue Life offers a fascinating portrait that has something to say to social scientists as well as all those curious about what happens in the main arena of Orthodox Jewish community life.

The Kabbalah is an esoteric Jewish doctrine adapted by author S.L. MacGregor Mathers to form the Hermetic order of the Golden Dawn, an occult organisation. This volume includes three of the critical books from the Zohar, the fundamental work in Kabbalah, as well as Mathers' introduction explaining the key elements of Jewish mysticism. Mathers' translation from Hebrew originally appeared in 1926, and it continues to be a valuable resource for students interested in Religious Studies, particularly Mysticism and the Occult.

The Creation of History in Ancient Israel demonstrates how the historian can start to piece together the history of ancient Israel using the Hebrew Bible as a source.

eBook available with sample pages: 020345524X

The Legacy of Boadicea explores the construction of personal and national identities in early modern England. It highlights the problems and anxieties of national identity in a nation with no native classical past.
Written in an accessible style, The Legacy of Boadicea:
* offers powerful new readings of the ancient British past in Shakespeare's King Lear and Cymbeline
* persuasively illuminates a 'Boadicean' heritage in royal iconography, drama, and the social symptoms of religious dissent
* articulates parallels between the eventual domestication of Britain's warrior queen in Restoration drama, and the social, political and legal decline in the status of women.

This addition to the Curzon "Popular Dictionaries of Religion" series contains around 1400 entries, describing clearly and concisely all the key aspects of religion, culture and history in Judaism. Entries range from "Aaron" to "Zugot" via "abolition", "cherub", "documentary hypothesis", "euthanasia", "falashas", and many other interesting and essential topics. This is not only a reference tool for those who want to know more about the tradition, but a practical guide to the current Jewish interpretation of topics of universal interest.

The author clarifies the meaning of the terms Messiah and Messianic and in the process places Jesus firmly among his own people and background. Recognition is given to the unique moral concepts of biblical teaching, from which Schonfield deduces a path to their universal implementation.

This book, first published in 1925, aims to demonstrate the ultimate roots of the many religious ideas of the Hebrews in Canaanite thought. This book will be of interest to students of theology and religious studies.

Judaism, as a religion and a way of life, has guided millions of lives and profoundly influenced its younger sisters, Christianity and Islam, as well as contributing major themes and norms to the liberal and humanistic traditions of the West. Not all Jews are religious, and not all of Judaism is philosophical; but at its core Judaism rests on a complex of values and ideas that address the abiding concerns of philosophy and perennial questions about the meaning and purpose of life, the nature of the universe, the roots and fruits of human responsibility, the character of justice, the worth of nature, and the dignity of persons. Judaism: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation examines some of the central questions that such ideas raise, drawing on the ancient and more recent sources of Jewish thought, as viewed from a contemporary philosophical standpoint. This book is an ideal introduction for students of religion and philosophy who want to gain an understanding of the key themes and values of Judaism.

Moses Maimonides (1135-1204) is recognized both as a leading figure in Jewish thought and as one of the most radical philosophers of the Islamic world. This work provides a general introduction to his philosophy, exploring his arguments, especially those to be found in his "Guide of the perplexed", and examining their implications and validity. Oliver Leaman shows that Maimonides' arguments - on the immortality of the soul, the basis of morality, the creation of the world, the notion of prophecy, the concept of God - are related to his central account of the meaning of religious language, and ultimately to his theory of meaning itself. The discussion offers insight into the rich cultural atmosphere of the Islamic world during Maimonides' time, and shows him to be the outstanding personality in the development of Islamic civilization. The study reveals the significance of Maimonides to contemporary philosophical and theological problems, and should be of interest to philosophers, theologians, Islamicists, and medievalists.

The Book of Hiding offers a fluent and erudite analysis of the parallels between the Bible and contemporary discussions of gender, ethnicity and social ambiguity. Beal focuses particularly on the traditionally marginalised book of Esther, in order to examine closely the categories of self and other in relation to religion, sexism, nationalism, and the ever-looming legacies and future possibilities of annihilation. Beal applies the critical tools of contemporary theorists, such as Cixous, Irigaray and Levinas, challenging widely held assumptions about the moral and life-affirming message of Scripture and even about the presence of God in the book of Esther. The Book of Hiding draws together a variety of different perspectives and disciplines, creating a unique space for dialogue raising new questions and reconsidering old assumptions, which is profoundly interesting and well-articulated.